Republican circus has big (crazy) tent

I’ve long mocked the birther movement — you know, that group of people who claim that President Barack Obama is a Muslim communist born in Kenya and then smuggled into Hawaii just days later so his parents could get a birth announcement in the local newspaper, thereby allowing that nearly 50 years later Obama could be elected the nation’s first African American president. Yeah. Those people.

The entire premise of the birther movement is based on some pretty huge leaps in faith. But it’s also based on incredibly huge doses of distrust and disbelief in anything that’s not proven to them. It’s this sort of scenario by which people ask others to prove that God doesn’t exist. And when they can’t, use that as proof of God himself.

By the birthers’ accounts, Obama is guilty (of being a foreign-born commie Muslim set out to destroy the U.S. from the inside by becoming president while personally going door-to-door confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens) until proven innocent (of all those crazy things).

Funny thing is, once Obama released his “long-form” birth certificate, the crazies attacked it, saying it was fake and part of the liberal conspiracy to promote abortion and forced bi-racial gay weddings — or whatever. I’ve learned to tune them out. No amount of proof in the world is good enough for people who want to believe something else.

Stephen Colbert defined this phenomenon as “truthiness” — the act of believing in something based not on the facts you’re presented, but rather what your gut tells you.

Well move over, birthers, now there’s something crazier.

At the end of December, the president — in an interview with the New Republic — mentioned that he routinely shoots skeet at Camp David. This came in response to whether he’s ever fired a gun — no doubt in response to his ongoing efforts at gun control.

You wouldn’t think that a simple answer to a simple question would cause such a ruckus, but it did. Immediately, the whacko machine went into overdrive, asserting that there’s no way a commie like Obammie has ever fired a gun.

The White House did what any rational spin control group would do. They ignored the crazies — including Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn — who had challenged the president to a shooting contest.

But the din of the “skeeters” (or “skeet birthers” as Obama senior advisor David Plouffe referred to them on Twitter) continued to grow. And grow.

Finally, the White House decided that the only way to make the skeeters go away was to placate them with a photo of the president firing a gun. Which they provided on Saturday.

In typical tinfoil hat reaction, the photo was denounced as a fake, Photoshopped to make it look like the president was firing a gun when he was really … um … that part’s not clear. But obviously, they claimed, it’s fake. And if it’s real, it proves that he doesn’t know how to fire a gun. Or something.

Then they got into their spaceship with Elvis and went to planet Crazyville.

Scott Leffler an equal opportunity offender who likes hats — just not tinfoil ones. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler.